MIRACLE BELIEFS ARE UNNECESSARY
Miracles are events that seem to be against nature or the way natural law
usually runs. In other words, they cannot be explained by nature. Examples are
the Blessed Virgin Mary appearing to children, the unexplained cure of incurable
illness, blood coming out of nowhere on Catholic communion wafers, the sun
spinning at Fatima in Portugal in 1917 and most importantly Jesus Christ coming
back to life after being dead nearly three days. It is thought that only God can
do these things.
Belief in miracles is not going to give you self-confidence. It is not going to
put bread on the table. It is not going to help your flu. The stress on miracles
in religion is disgraceful and a waste of energy. It shows a tendency to prefer
fantasy to fact. Even if miracles do happen and are real, believers suffer that
tendency. You can live a humanitarian life without believing in miracles. Some
of the people adored today as saints claimed they had lost their faith meaning
they ceased to believe in miracles.
If you would like comfort that does not mean miracles are needed. Nobody dies of
depression because miracles don't happen or because they don't believe in them.
You don't need to believe in miracles. Jesus said you do but he was being a
sectarian dogmatist.
Do you need not to believe? Maybe. It would be safer. There would be nobody
going to fake shrines and mediums and wasting money on magic books if nobody
believed in miracles. Believing in miracles is unsafe.
Hypothetically, let us assume we need to believe in some miracles at least. The
only thing that can tell us that we need to is the evidence for the miracle. It
has to be good enough. We need to believe not because it is a miracle but
because the evidence is persuasive. We believe for the evidence not the miracle.
We believe because of the evidence not the miracle.
If miracles are unnecessary, belief in miracles is unnecessary too. Belief is
far more unnecessary.
If miracles are not that important or unnecessary, it follows then that if we
say the evidence will never be good enough to justify believing we are saying it
because we are sensible and not because we are unfairly biased against the
supernatural. And religion delights in accusing sceptics of being unfair and
biased.